Dear Lindsey:

When we feel anxious, it feels badly, like there is something wrong with us and everyone can see it, everyone sees it and thinks: there is something wrong with ___. Even as we try our best to appear .. normal, we are afraid it shows, that something-is-wrong with us. Almost as if others can read our thoughts or interpret our facial expressions, volume of our voice accurately and find us out, find out we are totally weird.

Reality is either other people are going through the same thing, and appearing normal to us (their efforts successful), and they are not even thinking about how weird you are, being too busy to hide their weirdness, or- they are busy otherwise, thinking about what happened in their lives yesterday, what will happen next month when they have to change apartments, what is their partner doing right now and is he/ she cheating or whatnot.

People are very busy in that distance between the ears. As busy as you are, so they don’t have the time and space to think about you. You have to take off your clothes at work and dance naked if you want everyone to pay attention to you!

So you sit there and think: how is my voice, is it too loud.. how is my face, does it show? No one pays attention!

anita